HOT DEBATE: Five UAE general managers to watch

THE GENERAL MANAGERS...

Rupprecht Queitsch, general manager, JW Marriott Marquis Dubai
Having been with Marriott for 26 years and held previous assignments in Paris, New York and London, this is Queitsch’s first assignment in Dubai. He will oversee Dubai’s largest, tallest hotel.

Martin van Kan, general manager, Fairmont The Palm, Dubai
Van Kan has worked in 13 countries and 18 cities during his 30-plus years in the hotel business and from his travels, hopes to bring authentic experiences to his range of F&B outlets at The Palm’s upcoming urban resort hotel.

Luigi Romaniello, managing director, Rosewood Abu Dhabi
Italian-born Romaniello has been based in Abu Dhabi for one year now, heading up the pre-opening of Rosewood’s GCC debut. He has worked with Rosewood for 12 years in the Caribbean and US and is now excited about bringing the company’s personalised boutique-style property to the UAE.

Mario Ferraro, general manager, Conrad Dubai
It was the thrill of opening Hilton Worldwide’s first Conrad hotel in the GCC that encouraged Ferraro to move to Dubai from Italy, where he had worked for 25 years. Ferraro is focused on developing an “ambassador” of the brand.

Pep Lozano, general manager, Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi
Spanish Lozano has worked with Ritz-Carlton for the past 20 years. He now heads up the Abu Dhabi flagship Grand Canal Hotel, located opposite the mesmerising Sheikh Zayed Mosque. As well as offering 10 F&B outlets inside the hotel, the Venetian Village retail development will offer a host of restaurants too, making the hotel a true destination.

Article continues on next page...

2583 ROOMS, 48 RESTAURANTS, 4350 STAFF VACANCIES

By the end of 2012, these GMs will open a total of 2583 hotel rooms and 48 restaurants in the UAE. Together they are recruiting more than 4350 staff. Hotelier’s exclusive roundtable reveals their recruitment strategies, F&B philosophies and where in the pre-opening ranks they really are…

No-one could ever dare suggest that the UAE’s hotel industry is stagnating. These five general managers, each representing one of the country’s most exciting upcoming launches, are testament to the dynamism, creativity and sheer boldness still dominating the hospitality scene in the emirates.

Indeed, with so many developments underway, it can be difficult to work out who is doing what and when. That’s why this month, Hotelier Middle East gathered these five GMs for an exclusive roundtable held at the upcoming JW Marriott Marquis Dubai; the first ‘event’ to be held in one of the property’s mammoth ballrooms no less.

We had a brief tour of the hotel, taking in floor-to-ceiling murals in the Indian restaurant being developed in consultation with famed chef Atul Kochhar and breathtaking views across Dubai’s ‘World’ islands, before settling down to discuss the nitty-gritty of the pre-opening process, the huge recruitment task and the pressure to lead their teams to success.

The mantra “location, location, location” still rings true in the UAE: what are the benefits and any potential pitfalls of your hotel’s location?
Pep Lozano, Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi: In terms of Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi I think location is key. We are right in front of Sheikh Zayed Mosque which is one of the most impressive monuments within the UAE.

The area is called Between Two Bridges, we’re actually facing the Shangri-La and the Fairmont which make up this area which is called Grand Canal, a destination itself. In Abu Dhabi you have the Corniche where you have the big mass of five-star hotels, you have Between Two Bridges, and then you have Yas Island and Saadiyat Island. We’re actually 15 minutes from the Corniche, 15 minutes to the airport, which makes it a very great location.

Luigi Romaniello, Rosewood Abu Dhabi: Our location is very favourable in that we are at the heart of the business centre of Abu Dhabi — right in front of the Abu Dhabi mall my ownership [Mubadala] has developed an island [Al Maryah island, formerly Sowwah Island] and established the new Abu Dhabi stock exchange there, we forecast occupying about 12,000 people in those towers.

And I’m also connected to the Cleveland Clinic [opening end 2013] — we have a sky link, the patients will have a golf cart to our hotel, we’ll be able to room the families while the patients get their care.

So we do have a couple of captive audiences within our market. We have a wonderful retail component below us that is called the Galleria being built with 110 shops, [and so] along with a spa, with our 11 F&B venues, with the shopping, with the business — the high point of energy that it has — we feel that we can get a great business and leisure clientele.

Martin van Kan, Fairmont The Palm, Dubai: We’ll be the only hotel at the moment that is not on the crescent [of Palm Jumeirah] , we’re on what is known as the trunk, although we don’t want to call it the trunk anymore — we want to call it the heart of the island where we can service all the ‘Palmies’.

It’s the first hotel you’re going to hit coming onto the island, when you come off the island the hotel’s there, it’s close to Internet City, Knowledge Village but at the same time…you have the leisure component with four swimming pools, 450m long beach, kids centre — the hotel is also able to be a major part and centre and hub for the local community of the island and we’ll be playing to that a lot.

It’s not a destination hotel such as our competitors on the crescent but it lends itself very well to being able to share its market segmentation between corporate and leisure, obviously favouring the leisure but that’s purely [down to] its location.

Mario Ferraro, Conrad Dubai: I think location is a key success factor and our hotel is strategically located on Sheikh Zayed Road in front of the World Trade Centre and we are connected by the Metro bridge. DIFC is in front of us, and we are close to the shopping malls and I think the location is fantastic. It’s close to the airport, really for the business traveller it’s the perfect location because you are in the heart of the city and you can still attract leisure clientele because you are close to the shopping areas and the beaches.

Rupprecht Queitsch: For our market I couldn’t be happier with this location. Our key business is the convention market, the corporate business traveller, that doesn’t mean that we ignore the leisure traveller and there is still a lot of that, but for the business traveller this is ideal.

You have a very good location next to the financial district in the Business Bay district — although it still needs to be developed more, I have a few numbers: the total development is a population of 190,000, plus 110,000 working in Business Bay so that’s around 300,000 people just in the surrounding area.

We are obviously close to the convention centre, we’re working very closely with the tourism bureau. It takes me 10-12 minutes in the car to come from the Palm and it’s 20 minutes to the airport the other side. Being right off Sheikh Zayed Road it’s very easy to access.

Article continues on next page ...

You’ve touched on your target markets – who are you appealing to?
Pep: We will be targeting both leisure market and business. We have the beach in front of us and a huge kids club and we’re very successful with families and children coming from the UK and Germany because they will be our main markets for leisure.

We have a very good health club and a lot of facilities, so we will attract a lot of clientele during the weekends and we will have available health club family memberships. Another main market will be government — with Abu Dhabi National Hotels (ADNH) and Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (ADTCA) we are preparing a huge marketing plan to attract major businesses in Abu Dhabi and we have a lot of weddings already reserved.

The ballroom is very different, it has a feeling of a palace, very traditional, gold, silver, huge chandeliers, beautiful — the locals will really enjoy it. We have 85 villas, the resort is 57 acres of land, and this makes it very convenient for families — they come directly and go and check in and enjoy the villas on the weekend.

Mario: Sheikh Zayed Road is traditionally serving the corporate market… and the MICE market segment. We are also targeting the MICE market, conferences, government events, social events, weddings, company conventions.

We will also position ourselves in the leisure market — we have a unique leisure component which is the pool deck which nobody else has on Sheikh Zayed Road. And we are focusing and targeting the local clientele with our f&b proposal. We are very strong in the US market and in Europe, so definitely we will have very diversified business mix from a geographical perspective. Obviously we are operating in the Middle East and GCC is one of our main markets.

Luigi: We have a very good mix between corporate business and leisure. On the corporate side of course being next to the financial centre of Abu Dhabi we feel we can attract a lot of the business travellers during the week days and then during the weekend, because of the dynamic of our restaurants, the spa and the shopping and all of that, we are attracting also some leisure guests. The medical centre I think is a new market for Abu Dhabi and this is brand new infrastructure – it has 400 beds — and we feel that could be a very good USP for us.

Martin: Fairmont is going to be predominately leisure business. Obviously going to the traditional core source markets that are bringing business onto the island, very large influx from CIS, Czech Republic, a lot of the ownership of houses on the island are actually people of those nationalities.

The source markets are Europe, predominately Switzerland, Germany which will continue to come here in droves at different times of the year, plus the English tourist market. Russia is still a very, very big market, GCC markets are going to be extremely important to us. We have good traction already in Saudi Arabia with our property at Makkah — we really have phenomenal visibility in that location.

We’re looking at an average length of stay of anywhere to about four to five days from these different markets. The remainder of the business is going to be topped up with the corporate business — with firm bookings already going into the new year for meetings. It’s going to lend itself I think very well to the GCC traveller market, with the kids club and the beaches and also proximity to shopping malls.

Rupprecht: We really want to work with Dubai Convention Bureau and all institutions to establish Dubai more on the convention landscape, MICE etc. It’s a huge business worldwide; it contributed $106 billion to GDP in the US.

Being at home in the US, [JW is] connected with big bookers from the US, not only there but also Europe. Really I took this on to compete with other cities and destinations rather than within Dubai.

We want the big business and I’m competing with Berlin and Lisbon and Madrid. We have a lot of interest from BRIC, it’s really the pharmaceutical, the consulting, the banking [industries].

[We have] two ballrooms, all the business facilities, we’re going to have some restaurants open 24 hours, we will cater to the international traveller. There’s a whole listing [of MICE destinations], if you take the top 20 or 25, Dubai doesn’t show up — it’s very small still but one third of the world’s population and also some businesses are within a five-six hour flight from Dubai.

There’s a huge potential to get business meetings here in Dubai, we’re also going to work with our colleagues here, we need large city wide conventions, we can house up to 1000-1200 room conventions which is what you have in Paris and London.

Article continues on next page ...

So this is very much a build it and they will come approach?
Rupprecht: Yes correct.

Mario: Dubai is still not perceived as a MICE destination but I think with the opening of the JW Marriott Marquis and the Conrad we will definitely drive new business to Dubai and contribute to positioning Dubai as a MICE destination for larger conferences and events.

Rupprecht: It’s really a case of education. This is where we work very closely with the convention bureaus, they’ve been looking for a hotel like this where they can host a meeting because his advantages [at Conrad] and their advantages [Fairmont] are also my advantages and we can really complement each other because the convention guy also likes to go to the beach, go to the restaurant. The convention I have booked for January, they’re here five nights, 700 rooms, they’re going to discover the town, hit the shopping malls, go to the beach, hit the desert safaris and the camel shows — this is added business to the city which the city would have never had.

Luigi: And they would have gone elsewhere without this.

Pep: In Abu Dhabi we are pushing hard for it; we just had a major site inspection for car launches. We have been in the market already for 18 months, we are working very closely with ADTCA to attract big groups and major events – one of them will be next year WTTC – that’s a huge conference that was pulled from Tokyo that is now happening in Abu Dhabi and that’s thanks to ADTCA. The real advantage for us is having three five-star hotels in the same location — Fairmont, Shangri-La and Ritz-Carlton — it’s about 2000 rooms in the same area just right across the water and we’re actually competing with other hotels on the Corniche.

What stage of pre-opening are you at and when are you opening?
Rupprecht: The target is still the last quarter of this year. Right now, we are pretty much deciding all the uniforms, thousands of them, we are at hiring stage, in the stages of receiving all the furniture, all the furniture has arrived now, we are putting it into place. The restaurant concept design is very important, we are pretty much finalising that. The linen, china, glassware — all of that alone is about $3.5 million.

The fit out stage should be finished within a month, that includes carpets down, total fit out and then you start the details and then you start the snagging and then you have fire life safety tests and security tests – that’s the final stage, where you test all the entire building for life safety which is crucial.

You want to pass all those and then you can pretty much move in and start operating. We have 19 kitchens to fire up — we are hiring over 250 culinary people and they’re going to be here soon firing up kitchens. Right now, we have about 60, 65 on the team, mainly managers, some support staff. By the end of June we will have a management team of about 100. When we open in Q4, we expect numbers to reach 1150.

Martin: We’re opening around the same time. Q3 or Q4 is quite a big target to be hitting but I think that in Dubai that’s a relatively accurate answer to give. Because obviously everything is so much dependant on getting your certificates on time, your building completion certificates need to be finalised — it’s a long spider’s web of flow charts that you have to go through and one thing can’t be done before the thing above it.

We’re looking at October for our opening. The building is completed, back of house, front of house all completed, carpets are all down, the only thing that isn’t done yet is the loading of the building with all the furniture, that can only be done once we’ve got building completion certificates in place but that’s all on ships at the moment ready to come in.

We’ve got 55 colleagues on board at the moment and they’re managers. We will be ramping up to roughly 700 colleagues by end July, beginning August, doing training during Ramadan — it’s going to be flip-sided days, training will be done at night rather than in the day, so it gives a lot of people opportunities to become culturally sensitised during the holy month.

Luigi: We are in the fit-out stage of our project right now. The building is structurally completed for the most part so now all the soft goods are starting to come alive, all the designs are coming alive and it’s a very exciting part of the project because I’ve seen all the wall coverings, the carpets coming in and we have a very beautiful understated design, it’s not a flash hotel, it’s a very elegant hotel, and I see the marble and the wood and I say ‘oh gosh it’s about time to open now’!

Now there are 20 of us at executive level and department head level. We are anticipating to receive the building some time in September and then the ownership has been very committed to give us a good three months to do full training.

We’re really going to start bringing people from all over the world, it’s going to require a great level of focus on really teaching all the details of running one of our hotels. We don’t want to do a soft opening.

I don’t believe in training when we have the guests, the day that we open the door we’re going to have the full article there, we’ll have everyone working there and everyone is going to be fully trained. We do all our experiential training among ourselves, we put heads in beds and [involve] other officials from Rosewood.

We have this whole training system which allows us to really measure the level of service internally and then once we open from the first day we’re going to be fully on with that.

We are expecting about 650 staff to start with for an 189-room hotel, because we have another 127 serviced apartments above us for short- and long-term stays, including some wonderful penthouses.

Mario: We’re targeting the end of Q4. Right now the building is about 80% complete, back of house is completely done. The contractor is starting to work on the finishings, within the next two weeks we will have air conditioning on site, this will be the stage where we start to bring in the furniture.

The furniture is already here in Dubai and we expect complete handover including all the certifications from the local authorities approximately end of August, middle of September. From that stage onwards we’ll do the fit out, the training, the opening simulation — the objective is to open 12 December.

Right now we are 12 — I have my four directors and some key heads of departments, by end of June the team will be up to 30, by end August I will have all my key team members on board — approximately 100 —and six weeks before the opening I will have my full team on board. We are targeting to open the hotel with approximately 750 team members and 850 after a month of opening.

Pep: At the Ritz-Carlton we just finalised the landscaping of the whole resort to make sure that when we open the landscaping is immaculate. We have a total of 40 people right now, mainly sales and marketing and guidance team members. Chef is already finalising the menus and we should expect by end June, first week of July to have all the managers on board; we calculate around 90 people to come on board.

The expected opening date is right after Ramadan so really we’re ramping up at the moment. In terms of the restaurants, four are completely finished, we’re just waiting for the furniture. In terms of staffing we will have ramp up as we are opening in September but once the hotel is fully open with the Venetian Village, the spa we are calculating around 1000 employees – for 530 rooms plus Venetian Village. The Venetian Village will be managed by the owning company ADNH but once the guests are in the resort they will not know it’s not all managed by Ritz-Carlton so training and procedures will be under Ritz-Carlton.

Article continues on next page ...

You are recruiting thousands of employees. What are the main challenges with this, and what are your plans for staff accommodation?
Martin: It’s a big financial drain carrying this kind of payroll because you’ve got to multiply it by at least another 1.7, 1.8 and when you think of the total cost to the company, you’ve got housing, you’ve got insurance, you’ve got food, you’ve got transportation, its just a phenomenal burden for an owner to carry before you’ve even opened up the hotel and it’s churning revenue.

You’ve got to find somewhere for them to live — when it’s 800, 900 you go into the local market and it’s hard work. You can’t take just parts of that building, you have to take all of it up front and that really is a major cost for our owner. We’re out in the Green Community, DIP.

Rupprecht: We have a unit that contains over 1200 people, we have about 50, 60 units in one building for managers who have privileges for apartments, and then the senior executives are looking for housing all over the place. The owner owns the building – we’re owned by Emirates Group.

Luigi: I’m very excited about mine because we wanted to make it a great lifestyle for our employees. They show up with a suitcase and that’s it. They want to have a nice lifestyle to live in and the expectation is they come to a luxury hotel and [it’s important] they live this kind of lifestyle and portray this kind of lifestyle to our guests, they have to really experience it themselves, so we were very adamant about recommending the right housing to our ownership for our employees.

We ended up going to Al Reef area, it’s less than 30 minutes away, we will provide a shuttle service, they have a swimming pool, and a fitness centre; it’s brand new. It’s not crowded and I think they’ll enjoy that very much. We feel that that’s a good retention point for us to give them a great lifestyle. It’s a good investment.

Pep: We just went to a compound in Khalifa Park where they will have the swimming pool, the gym, grocery shop, we provide transportation to the mosque, to the church, to the shopping area which is actually very close.

In terms of managers we’ve been very flexible, we’re trying to get the best people in the market especially in terms of sales and marketing so if they live in Dubai we allow them to stay here and then commute or if somebody is already in Abu Dhabi we maintain their housing. Nowadays people are more interested in their lifestyle so we have been very flexible trying to get the best candidates.

Mario: Definitely a key factor to attract the best people in the industry is to offer them a range of high quality benefits and staff accommodation is one of the most important components in the decision process for team members to select their employer.

We have shortlisted three options, we are definitely looking for staff accommodation in line with the best available here in the industry in Dubai. Above entry level we give our team members a choice, either to have based on level and position an apartment in our team building or simply to have an allowance so they can stay wherever they want.

In the Hotelier Middle East Salary Survey 2012, 82% of respondents said they thought line staff wages were too low. What are your views?
Martin: You’ve got such a totally different character today that is working in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

In the past you were having people come from India or Philippines or Sri Lanka that were coming to work over here because there weren’t opportunities for them back home or if there were opportunities, they were not paid well enough. It’s not the case anymore. Today there’s gainful employment in India, Philippines, Sri Lanka and alike and people now have to make a choice to go out and work aboard.

Salaries have not changed significantly in the entire Middle East for many years and I do believe it is time for a censor check and if those respondents are telling you that I would agree with them; it’s time for a change.

We still have some of the highest profit margins in this part of the world and our developers are used to these high percentages, become used to these high percentages, and I think there will come a time where people just simply have to say ok ‘it’s not going to be like that anymore’.

Rupprecht: I find first of all knowledge is power, I do a lot of research and here, the salaries are really all over the place. And I think that’s one of the key issues. You have individual operators here who still have a ‘I give you this and have a nice day and that’s it’.

Here the salaries for a cleaner or entry level, salaries are really AED 950 (US $259) to AED 1600 ($435) for the same job, even within some larger groups here they pay different salaries so I think the issue here is the ones who are really below the belt they should speak up really, on the other hand there’s some who already pay a pretty good fee and treat their staff ok.

I think at the end of the day the way we see it, I’m a firm a believer, salary is not the top denominator of somebody’s decision, even housing is not the top denominator, it’s how you treat your people, how you develop them, how you train them, how you advance them, how you really work with them within their department, that’s the key thing.

It’s not really the salary. Although having said that, hiring 15,000 people or 12,000 people [across hotels in UAE by the end of next year] it’s a buyer’s market, no question about it. But the good news is there is so many people still coming here; we probably went through over 5000 applications over our recruitment weekend so that shows you there is 5000 people coming through our offices just looking for jobs, some are unemployed, some are employed, so is it a buyer’s market or not? There are still a lot of people looking for jobs.

Luigi: I fully agree with what you are saying. Salary of course is important but at the end of the day if the employee feels recognised and feels there is promotion and good opportunities for him, employees tend to stay.

Martin: The good thing about what I said earlier on, the fact that you have now got people that are working here because they want to work over here, you’ve automatically got someone who is career oriented.

So now you’ve got somebody that’s actually looking for career progress so while entry salary may not be all that great at the moment, at least they have something to work towards rather than in the old days they were fixed on a two-year contract and that was the end of the story. Now you’ve got people who say ‘I want to stay and I want to make a career out of this’ and that’s why this open ended contract is extremely important.

Article continues on next page ...

Between you, your hotels will be adding a whopping 48 restaurants and bars to the UAE market. How challenging is it for hotels to compete against branded restaurants when it comes to F&B these days?
Mario: The restaurant scene in Dubai is a very competitive environment and over the past years the standalone restaurants have become more successful. I think today people are looking for lifestyle experiences.

For a hotel the key success factor in my opinion is to have a good balance and a variety of food and beverage which covers every kind of interest which makes your hotel an attraction because you can spend an evening there.

The place for me [is somewhere that offers] an aperitif, two, three excellent choices of restaurants of different concepts and cuisines and service styles and why not after dinner have some more options for nightlife — that’s what Conrad is aiming for. It will be a mix of own developed concepts by our company and some branded restaurants.

Luigi: We recognise that a celebrity chef adds prestige to the restaurant and we would have a couple of those coming in but out of the 11 outlets we have most of them are internally managed.

The spin I took on this is I rather invest money and effort in trying to get a great chef that sits with me 100% of the time rather than a brand, so we ended up recruiting a two Michelin star chef from Barcelona and we’re going to have a Catalan restaurant that is going to be very authentic. With the Indian restaurant we ended up having a very top chef from London that is coming to us from a very acclaimed restaurant. So in a way the investment is more on the person rather than a celebrity name above the door.

Pep: All the restaurants in the hotel will be managed by Ritz-Carlton. We have spent a lot of time in finding the best chef for each one of them including one of our best pastry chefs who is coming on board July 1.

These restaurants will be managed by ourselves however in the Venetian Village you will have signature chefs coming on board that will make it a very special area. The Venetian Village will be second phase so it still will not be open until mid next year. They are looking at international brands for Venetian Village.

We will target guests that come [and dine] regularly with a loyalty card and will give them some added values. Of course we’ll focus on high-end products but we’ll market on a standard price and not be too expensive to make sure our guests come back and create a local base. We’ll play a very big role within our local community with our Lebanese restaurant and we are hiring a lot of Middle East chefs to cater to their needs, which is very important.

Rupprecht: We are going to manage them all but we have some association consulting agreements with a couple of names [the hotel has already signed with Atul Kochhar]. Having lived here now a year and I love to go out, brand is very important in this marketplace.

Having said that, some brands funnily enough are successful and some are not so it’s not simply bringing a brand and here goes the cash register. There’s one thing I caution, a development I see that isn’t really going in the right direction, especially with restaurants coming along in this number, is the discounting here and promotion here I think is going over the top.

The market is flooded with promotions today and that takes away a little bit of the credibility. I understand the mechanics, there’s a lot of expats here, then there’s the corporate spender and the private spender and he is very price sensitive, the corporate spender here is not price sensitive and there are two worlds in between.

There are two million people now living in Dubai, make it 85% expats, the market is huge but I don’t quite understand what’s being thrown at the market now with the ladies nights and the brunches and you see deals that I think are absolutely out of this world, out of this norm and bring this in the wrong direction. I just wish there was a little more integrity in serving and marketing food and beverage in this marketplace.

Martin: We’re not going to be generating marketing through discounting, we just don’t believe in it. It just cannibalises what would normally be a relatively healthy price point or a simply attractive price point.

It’s about creating that loyalty, that loyal fan base, those advocates. We’re not going to have any branded restaurants, all of ours will be home built and just celebrating the chefs we have within the organisation and seeing how you can grow talent. I’m all in favour of branded restaurants as well but my only concern is on the Palm I think there’s already a relatively sufficiently large inventory of branded restaurants and you do need to also have restaurants that are sensitively priced in order to keep that local fan base healthy and happy.

Article continues on next page ...

HOTEL HIGHLIGHTS

Number of F&B outlets in your hotel
JW Marriott Marquis Dubai: 13
Rosewood Abu Dhabi: 11
Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi: 10
Fairmont The Palm, Dubai: 7
Conrad Dubai: 7

Number of rooms in your hotel
JW Marriott Marquis Dubai: 1608 — 804 opening 2012, 804
opening 2013.
Rosewood Abu Dhabi: 189 plus 127 serviced residences
Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi: 530 including 87 villas
Fairmont The Palm, Dubai: 381
Conrad Dubai: 552

Expected opening date
JW Marriott Marquis Dubai: Q4, targeting October
Rosewood Abu Dhabi: Q4, targeting December
Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi: Q3, after Ramadan, targeting September
Fairmont The Palm, Dubai: Q4, targeting October
Conrad Dubai: Q4, target date December 12

Number of staff being recruited
JW Marriott Marquis Dubai: 1150
Rosewood Abu Dhabi: 650
Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi: 1000
Fairmont The Palm, Dubai: 700
Conrad Dubai: 850

Ownership
JW Marriott Marquis Dubai:
Emirates Group
Rosewood Abu Dhabi: Mubadala
Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi National Hotels
Fairmont The Palm, Dubai: IFA Hotels & Resorts
Conrad Dubai: PPM, Private
Property Management, Abu Dhabi

How many pre-openings have you led?
Pep Lozano: This is my second.
Mario Ferraro: This is my first.
Luigi Romaniello: This is my second.
Martin van Kan: Two as GM; two as ex-comm.
Rupprecht Queitsch: Five as GM; two as number two.